“Yeah people can be very two-faced,” said Weedsport Sophomore Amelia Bradtke. “They try to make themselves better by bringing others down. You can comment on someone’s positive post, and then in real life, they aren’t even trying to be nice but making them feel like they are invisible in a way.” Amelia answered this from a question asking if people will say and act on one thing saying they support other women but then not in real life. Girls Supporting Girls is an ideology that can be fake and real at different times.
There are many hardships of being a woman and a young girl in today’s society. What do you think the biggest problem in girl culture is today? You would probably think that it’s the way that women and young girls perceive themselves, though it does fall under a category of a particular problem, it’s not what leads to being the biggest problem. The biggest problem in today’s society for women and young girls is over-sexualization. Oversexualization plays a huge role in how women and young girls perceive themselves in today’s world.
Weedsport Senior Gracie Fatcheric said, “ Oversexualization is a huge problem. The oversexualization including things like baggy clothes. You’ll get sexualized for being fat or for not showing what is underneath those baggy clothes that we wear. As opposed to wearing tight clothes, you’re viewed as ran-through and showing off what you have.”
As we can tell, oversexualization is huge in today’s world. Oversexualizing someone can lead to a lot of problems, such as eating disorders, change in body image, mental health issues, and sometimes even assault can occur during oversexualization. You may be wondering how this ties into girls supporting girls. This corresponds with this because most of these problems come from the fact that girls will judge you for having these aspects because you aren’t meeting society’s standards.
Do girls supporting girls help anyone in any way? What are the positives of girl culture? There are many positives to girls supporting girls and girl culture. Although a lot of girls can be fake in what they say, they try to set an example for younger girls so that they can continue in a society where judgment is pushed away and not relevant. I think that as a whole, speaking for all girls and women, we try to put a mask or layer of glue over the problems that we face socially and keep putting more and more layers on until it becomes world wide and we decide that we actually want to start doing something. As of this year, I think that older girls and younger women are trying to set more realistic ideals to show little kids that you can be who you want to be as you grow up and to not be scared of what you think might happen because you’ll have the support of other girls. We as women and young girls try to set a good example so that little kids, as they grow up, can continue enduring and make a better society than what is shaped now.
The movement of Girls Supporting Girls is an empowerment movement to remove the stigma around internalized misogyny. How did this movement even begin to start? It started many many years ago, even back in the 1900’s when women were fighting for their rights they showed girls supporting girls because of the fact that they needed to stick by each other and be there for each other through thick and thin. On September 27th of 2020 TikTok influencer Cynthia Parker had just turned 16. She had made several birthday posts, as all women and girls do to empower themselves. Her comments were flooded with negative energy and comments. Cynthia Parker came forward and said, “The idea of Girls Supporting Girls doesn’t apply to every girl I guess.” While women and girls do support each other there are so many negative effects in what we say and do towards each other women and girls. Weedsport Senior, Jaelyn Moore said to the question why did girls supporting girls became such a big deal, “I think it’s because how publicized men have become with sexual assault and the whole abortion thing, us girls really have to stick together.”
There are negatives and positives when it comes to being a woman, even when being a man there are still negatives and positives, but we speak out more on what happened to us as women than men do on what happened to them. For example, most rape and sexual assault reports come from women, but more men and young boys have been raped and sexually assaulted than women and young girls. Why is this? This is a factor of societal standards because us as women have also set a standard for men that they have to be strong and can’t come forward about what they have or are going through. This comes from the Girls Supporting Girls movement. It comes from this movement because we are solely focusing on us, and what happens to women, but we still don’t see how that affects others. Yes, the Girls Supporting Girls movement may be about women but it is supposed to be about how we support and uplift each other and how we are going change society for the better, it is not about bringing others of different genders down and being idealistic about how they live.
In conclusion, there are so many negatives and positives when it comes to Girls Supporting Girls. We don’t even know when this movement started because it can be drawn into so many other movements that women have done for themselves. Overall, us as women feel that this movement should be us uplifting each other, and sometimes we do that, but most of the time we are two faced when it comes to positivity around any subject of matter. Sometimes life gets hard for everyone, but that doesn’t mean that you have to take it out on other people, same gender or not. Women in society need to learn that this war of women against women isn’t going to do anything, it won’t move us forward to where we want to be in society and where we want to be respected, all it is going to do is draw us further and further back to our goal.
Citations:
Ranganathan, S. (2020, November 7). Girls Supporting Girls. elEstoque. https://elestoque.org/2020/11/07/opinion/girls-supporting-girls/
